


If We Make It Through December

by Suchsmallhands



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Cold Weather, Lie Low At Lupin's (Harry Potter), M/M, Post-First War with Voldemort, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suchsmallhands/pseuds/Suchsmallhands
Summary: In the winter of 1993, the old Lupin house is a good place to hide between two wars.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	If We Make It Through December

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to neurtsy and emergencymanagement on tumblr for helping me make this story the best version of itself that I could make.  
> The title of the fic comes from the song by Merle Haggard. Phoebe Bridgers does an even more depressed version if you like that.  
> If you like this, consider [ this Hozier song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7q-4mfl_s4)!  
> Quote at the end is Kurt Vonnegut from "Mother Night".

Remus was raised by a magical parent. Lyall went to work through the fireplace every day. Owls delivered mail – but then again Hope did always return from the post office in town with letters of her own under her arm. Domestic displays of magic were commonplace, in his youth. Lyall levitating the couch here, vanishing a bit of mess there. And then there were the magical healing spells he’d perform on his son, after those long and scary nights when something happened to him, ever since the night of the attack. He’d heal Remus, who was still crying in the first year following and who would in time cease this altogether as if shocked to silence by his own tears. Lyall would do this without a word and then he’d be gone.

As an adult, Remus understood why in retrospect. Understood that he struggled with what his son had become, and with his own involvement in this, and how to go on raising him. He could even see now, looking back, the conflicts all of this raised between his parents. And he admired how self-controlled both of them were, in refraining from fighting, in fulfilling duties to their son, in managing to stay married at all.

Hope would hold him to her chest, curled up on his little bed together, and while he fell asleep after being patched up she would explain to him what had happened again last night. Her hand petting over his hair so softly. And he would listen and, yes, eventually make sense of what he was and what was happening every month.

Magic was his upbringing. But Hope had introduced another facet to his life, bringing him up without magic. She washed the dishes by hand, so Remus did the same. Lyall may have once tried to offer to set a charm to do the washing up, but knowing her she’d have preferred to just do it herself, by her own patterns and habits. He’d learned to be married to his wife, who came from a world of her own. She’d learn about his spells and appreciate them and scorn them in this way or that, and he would become accustomed to her using electricity and a gas stove.

For Remus, all of this melding was as natural as rainfall or dew on the grass leaves in the morning outside their home in the tucked back hills of Wales. For him, Lyall may cast an orb of light or Hope might turn on a lamp. Both were familiar to him. But in his own learning of how to navigate the world, her ways, practical and straight forward and unmysterious, were what he would become accustom to first. Lyall was a speechless father. Maybe he’d have been more personable if what had happened had never passed. But as it were, he performed his duties in a mostly functional sense. Which left Remus’ teaching of how to navigate the world to Hope. And her muggle approach to the gardening, the cleaning, the walking down to the shops, all of it would be his default understanding of the world. Magic was an additional way to live. Albeit a very natural and intuitive one, which he’d known all his life.

So, all these years later, he heated the tea using the stove’s flame. He didn’t bother to keep up with the warming charms. The house was cool with winter chill but if he wanted warmth he would sit by the fireplace.

Sometimes he needed to live without magic, over these long lost years, depending on where he was. And then sometimes he just couldn’t be bothered, depending on when he was. But the habit lived on, even when he should probably invest the time into setting permanent warming spells. He didn’t have the money to pay for power to this cottage, his parents’, which he’d had in his name for years. All that had passed on from his parent’s humble material lives. He’d never really had money for things like electricity for long.

He had his teaching salary now, however. It would last him for a while, and he intended to make it last.

He set a cup of tea on the counter and looked out the window in the door to his left that led to the back garden, while he stirred milk and plenty of sugar in his tea. The air from outside frosted the glass and creeped inside, leaking through the air slow and cold. The light was grey and recent rains left the earth wet as the sun went down somewhere behind all the clouds.

He remembered when it was warm. Sipping absently and staring vacantly, he remembered summer and the heat that touched every memory. Even the warm nights on the parapets of Gryffindor tower, when four boys could gather and smoke cigarettes and grass without bundling up. The stars overhead seemed closer and blurrier in the summertime. Only the moonlight remained untouched by the sweetness of the summers, which brought visits at the Potter’s, and swimming in creeks without a shirt because the only people near enough to see were his friends.

He’d been healthier then, quicker to heal then, supernaturally quick. Behind his eyes the faces of the other three appeared, passing gingerly through his thoughts, as they were then. Pink cheeked and full of trouble and youth. One face lingered heavier, clinging as it never failed to do. _It was warm, and we were young,_ the face said in shades of shifting grey and silken black.

His fingers twitched absently around the cup, which acted like a little heater in the cold kitchen. The tile was chilled through his socks.

He remembered early September, mild and sometimes even warm, the way the green grass had waved happily on the lawns of Hogwarts. And Harry, his eyes waving too. He remembered staring. Drinking the vision after such a long drought. Yes, he looked so different now. But he had held him thirteen years ago, on a day at the end of the heat of July, held all of him right in the basket of his arms. And yes, he was there, the dark hair and the green eyes.

He blinked and sipped his tea, warming his mouth from the dusk chill.

He’d been practically on fire with every sight of Harry, lightning buzzing through his head every time Harry spoke to him. And he’d savored every class where he got to teach him. He’d managed to keep himself together when Harry spoke to him about James’ past and friends. Yes, he’d nearly dropped everything he was holding, it wasn’t his most composed moment, but he’d caught his things in the end. And his guard was so lowered by Harry, who didn’t smile nearly as much as he should have but was so inquisitive and familiar in the shape of his face and the sound of his voice.

At least he’d not given anything away when he’d seen the map. Of course his head was a madhouse of hilarity, but his skill at repression and lying was far too mature.

He thought about Harry all the time, now. Harry who needled and asked questions and pushed to know more, unlike anyone else anymore, much like those others long ago.

Remus left the cup on the counter and walked quietly through the house to pull on shoes and a second jumper and a coat. He stepped outside and carefully down the path to the garden, just aside from the house. There was no snow. But his breath puffed from his mouth like a drop of ink in a glass, his nose was cold. He wrapped his arms around himself and hid his hands from the freeze, against his flanks inside his coat. Standing between the rows, he looked around at the silent country of the night.

For a few moments he remembered Hope kneeling in this garden, mouse brown hair just like his pulled back from her face because it was hot and her arm would raise up to wipe sweat from her brow. He stared at the tree line, remembering his mother.

It had been many years since he’d been able to remember her without also fisting the hilt of a dagger in his gut. Her and all the rest. It had always felt so ironic, all of the grief that bore him through the last decade. As if the old curse that he’d picked up had grown gluttonous, lusting for more and more, gratuitous in its consumption. _They were all of them supposed to outlive you, but what if none of them did? Wouldn’t that be something. How would you carry that? Could you survive that too? Let’s see._

Of course then there was still Harry. And Remus was so impotent here. There was nothing he could do, not with what he was, and with the blood magic protecting him. And the state of him. There was no parent in him, then.

Still, he felt it even now, blinking at the tops of the trees which loomed as a black line in the icy starry sky, wonder. Wonder at what could have been.

Now, something happened which had ceased for many years, it echoed again in his head. A pushy voice, making comments on his thoughts. It told him they knew what could have been, and it forbade him from leaning on the old furry problem as an excuse. He had never liked that bit of self-hobbling. He had always preferred Remus when he was at his most comfortable, his most content, with what he was.

Remus exhaled in a huff, rubbing his freezing nose and turning his head to cast out around the hills. He was watching, waiting. Since the news of Voldemort’s possible return – the worn and exhausted horror of it – Remus had kept the defensive charms on the Lupin house renewed. He, and the home itself, were invisible to anyone outside the perimeter. Once they step inside, the ruse is up, but the protection worked well on those who didn’t already know where to find him.

There was someone out there now, knowing where to find him.

He looked up at the stars. The moon, it glowered down on him, one of its closest children, regarded him as he regarded it. He could feel something of their shared magic, vibrating at the right frequency, of the half moon waxing.

He was tired, tired like he had been, for so long, and the cold was going to leave him sore in the morning. But still, something was awake now which had long been presumed dead.

He turned and carefully returned into the house, not much warmer but he needn’t cast a charm. He was going right to bed anyway.

* * *

He woke in the late morning and cast a heating charm over the room, so he could wake up painlessly. He passed the morning drinking hot tea and reading, _Fathom_ , by Jude Thomas. He waited till the sunlight slanted from the steep overhead angle of noon. He’d taken his parent’s old room, moved most of their stuff into his old room, kept only a few of his mother’s things in the bedside table. This room got morning light from the single, eastern window, and in the evening the light cloaked the house from the west and fell over into the view of the window, lighting the hill in the distance and the trees atop it which blazed at sunset as if alight with fire, which burned itself out up to the top of the leaves.

He stayed in bed, while the morning sun slowly left the room and the frost on the glass faded away, like this until getting up to start another day.

He stayed in the room, still warm, and wrote out a letter to Dumbledore. This was not a common occurrence. The war ended and Dumbledore’s presence in Remus’ life mostly halted with Remus’ own disappearance from the Order, which itself disbanded not long after that Halloween in ’81. Perhaps the voice in his head would scorn this, criticize it. But to Remus, no news from Dumbledore was good news. And sure as anything, Remus heard the news of the escape and then received his first visit from the old man in many years. So maybe the feeling was superstitious, but it had never been proven wrong.

Their letters were nothing but proof to Remus that the worst was not behind him now. As unfathomable as this felt to the soles of his feet. Yet there was still more to lose, and Dumbledore was updating him in a slow and precautious tone on Order contacts and dark creature intelligence.

It was with the sealing of this envelope that he thought of Harry. Remus was not a terribly communicative person and this had not improved over the last ten years. He wouldn’t manage a full page to Harry. But he dug through his old things, stashed in his old room, just for his sake. He didn’t like to dig up memories and hadn’t touched these dusty boxes in many years. He didn’t particularly enjoy doing so now. But he managed to, because now the secrets he had tried to protect Harry from were declawed. Now he could send these photographs.

He sealed them in a letter and wrote on a slip of paper, _thought you might find these interesting, -M._

He wasn’t sure that Harry quite knew yet what ‘M’ even stood for, but he’d figure it out. Remus had written on enough of Harry’s essays for him to know this sender.

He stepped outside and apparated to Hogsmeade to pay for an owl at the town post office to take his letters. Much as he detested the imposition on his body which came with apparating, his house was no longer connected to the floo network and he didn’t have an owl.

He had hardly needed one until recently.

In the street outside the post, all was quiet and frozen, and it had snowed here. He picked his way to the end of the street, passing a cafe which had actually been standing since before he’d graduated school. He could smell the pastries and the coffee. He had this year’s pay now, he hadn’t been this flush since the height of his curse breaking. But he knew he had to conserve this money. So he didn’t stop for coffee and warm bread and a rare cigarette.

He hoped, as he made his way back home, that he would receive his message well. He’d never sent before because Harry didn’t know him. And upon meeting him at Hogwarts, he couldn’t make himself break the anonymity. He’d couldn’t imagine how. When he could imagine, he knew it would come with more questions and he didn’t want to answer those. It would be better to protect Harry from the truth that Remus himself had carried like a stone in his belly for years. _The person who was supposed to protect you betrayed your parents and killed their friend._

Remus had barely sorted this story out in his own head. He certainly couldn’t speak about it. So he didn’t. He hoped that Harry would forgive him for these years, once he cottoned on to full story. _But I held you thirteen years ago, on a day at the end of the heat of July, held all of you right in the basket of my arms._

He could only hope they made it that far, enough for Harry to demand explanation for his absence.

He made for home.

* * *

He passed another week quietly, filling long hours with reading and little else. He’d lived long like this, as if half asleep. He hardly gave himself anything but a good book because he had nothing else to give – and reading too, only in the better years, years with more fat to line the bones of his life and less desperation. 

This week passed with an odd sense of consciousness that was only new to him since that day in the shack, when the world had notched back down into place in some ways. Still a horrifying place. But now it horrified with more sense.

That’s how he drifted through time now.

Drifting until a night came when he felt the magical barrier around the house shiver. He became still. He stood from the couch and let his wand rest at his side, waiting. He stared through the dark, vanishing the magical orb that had been lighting the room. The dark was a fine place for him when he felt like this, it hid him. He was the one who knew this house and he walked silently through it, eyes watching with a predatory evenness.

He knew someone was inside the line. He waited, watching doors and the windows. Then, out of the quiet, there came a scratch at the door. It was a plain sound. Conspicuous, unhurried. Remus stared at the door, it was in the kitchen leading to the back garden.

He exhaled the little breath in his lungs and blinked out of that brief limbo. He could have smiled if he was the sort to these days.

He walked to the back door and opened it up, eyes lowering to the grim on his stoop.

“Sirius.” Remus said, so quietly as not to disturb the night. The black dog looked up at him, his head low. Remus stepped back and Padfoot lifted one paw after the other, padded right into the kitchen. His claws clicked on the tile. Remus closed the door and used his wand to light cast light into the lamp over the stove. The lamp lit the room in a subtle yellow glow.

Padfoot was thin. Remus remembered this dog to be big, long, strong and his fur was soft and shiny when he ran his hand through it. None of this was so now and if one saw this dog on the street they might leave food out at a safe distance.

The dog looked at him for a moment and the outline of him dematerialized in a heat shimmer, replaced by Sirius.

Remus stared. Sirius stared.

This was his proof that it had been real. That he hadn’t made up a horrible story in his head, one so sordid only he could have fabricated it for comfort. But this had truly happened. And Remus was speechless and apparently, so was Sirius.

“Hey.” Remus breathed out. He blinked, taking him in.

“Hey.” Sirius whispered in return. He was a slip of a man, too, thinner than was healthy. His hair had been cut since that day in the shack, it was now landed on his shoulders – just slightly longer than he used to like it. And Remus started applying decade old memories of who he remembered to this wraith. He’d probably stolen the torn jumper he wore. There was something flattened in his eyes.

But he remembered.

“You took a while.” Remus managed, his first formed sentence for him.

Sirius stared back at him, searching through his eyes in his own way, so they measured each other. He took longer to reply than he’d have expected.

“I was watching Harry.” He said. His voice resonated and Remus remembered more, his ears remembered this sound.

He nodded. They both stared some more. Sirius seeming content to look. Though content was not a word he’d use for this flattened, hollowed world before Remus. And Remus wondered about that, eyes flickering over him. He wondered.

Somewhere though in the stone grey of his eyes Remus swore he saw something like hunger. Hollow and wrong, but this was finally familiar in those eyes.

_I can work with this._

Something tightened ever so slightly in Sirius’ face and Remus realized now that he had begun at some point to shiver. Remus realized it was too cold in the house which had no magic or muggle means of permanent warmth.

“Oh, Christ, you’re cold.” Remus cast a warming charm over the kitchen immediately. Sirius watched his wand and his arm, eyes tracking, and he kept shivering in the sudden warmth that filled the room like a bubble of tree sap. The warmth was thorough and permeating and Remus had used proper care in it, unlike his usual shoddy slapdash that he accepted for himself.

But Remus realized with an adjustment that Sirius accepted, too. He could see it in his face and in this strange, strange silence. Recognized the familiarity of have-not.

He realized someone would have to pay attention to what they had or had not, and so he did.

“Here, you must be hungry.” Remus nodded at the kitchen table just to their side, humble and just big enough for four. “I’ll put on some food.”

Sirius went to the table and sat down. Remus set a pot of water to boil on the stove and knew Sirius was staring at him, his shivering slowing down steadily to a stop with the over-thorough charm.

Remus excused himself and went to his bedroom, dug through his drawers for a jumper and warm pajama pants and socks. He did this quickly, not wanting to leave him in the kitchen alone, but all the while thinking: _I’ve thought about you for weeks, I’ve thought about you so much, I’ve wondered about you every day._ And who is this he’d been wondering about? He was still wondering this when he started back to the kitchen with the clothes folded in his hands.

He wanted to ask, _why didn’t you come right to me._ But he knew the answers. Harry, and stalking his house like a watchdog, was the explicable one. And then there was the rest. Neither of them could articulate it but it was no less there.

He was back in the kitchen within a minute, handing the clothes into Sirius’ open hands who looked up at him with those flattened eyes.

“These are clean.” Remus murmured, “They’ll help you keep warm.”

Sirius looked at them for a moment, nodding. _They’ll feel better than the rags you have on._ And it may be many years in the coming. But it had to start somewhere.

Remus turned back to the stove and started cutting and mixing ingredients together for a simple but functional meal. This was the last of the food and there wouldn’t be enough for two. He hadn’t realized he’d need enough for two tonight.

He heard a shuffling sound and realized that Sirius had not elected to leave the room to change. He too knew this house, he’d been here in their teenage years in another life. So for whatever reason, he pulled off his old clothes and pulled on the new ones unhurriedly, all while Remus kept his back firmly turned and his eyes on the steaming pot and bits of bread he was tearing to drop in and soften up.

Once the sounds of his rustling ceased, Sirius spoke again. “Do you have enough money?”

Remus didn’t falter. “Yeah, I’m alright, I’ve got some for the year from Dumbledore.”

“I’ll get the key to the Black vault. You can have that.”

Remus did blink at this information, he hadn’t realized Sirius was the last of his family to have access to the money. He turned his head to him, opening his mouth to protest that he didn’t need this but was interrupted.

“I’d have to break in to access it anyways.” Sirius said, eyes catching on the steam rising from the stove. “Key or none.”

Remus let it go. Breaking in to Gringott’s was a trick they might have thought up a hundred years ago but now the realization of how wanted Sirius still was to the rest of the world was bleak. Suddenly, abruptly, Remus felt a stab of yearning in his ribs for James. He hadn’t felt anything quite so strongly like it in some time, but things were changing now.

He cooked. He stirred the food and realized that Sirius was the last Black standing, aside from extended family. It seemed despite his parent’s efforts that Sirius was decidedly the true heir by process of elimination.

Remus remembered the night that Regulus died. The news had moved through the war like a ripple, shuddering across both factions. Any death on either side was likely to be noted, but this was telling. Regulus was not killed by one of the Order of the Phoenix and it was the understanding that his own side had slain him. Sirius had gone somewhat off at the news, as if a wire had been cut in his brain and left him with that odd shocked stillness in his eyes that Remus could still remember. And he had fled before anyone could stop him. This before the prophecy was told, James and Remus had stayed up with Lily waiting on him. They sent word to Peter who was absent at the moment. It wasn’t until the Potter’s went into hiding that the real secret keeping and suspicions arose and tore their relationship to pieces.

Eventually Andromeda’s patronus arrived with reassurances that Sirius was with her. He had come to her as family, to confirm his brother’s death. Andromeda had told him what most people knew, confirmed to her by Narcissa, who was breaking the rules in speaking to her sister still. Narcissa met with her in utmost secrecy, knowing what she knew and sharing it with a blood traitor who kept contact with the other side was a killable offence. And a curious leak of information.

Sirius slept on Andromeda’s couch that night, with her curled in the armchair, because she wouldn’t leave him. Ted and Nymphadora slept upstairs and Sirius lay there shocked until he fell asleep.

When he came home that next day, he seemed speechless still, even when James wrapped him in a hug and didn’t let go. It wasn’t until that night when James was gone and Remus was in another room that Sirius cried. When Remus came in to find him curled on the bed, sobbing into the blankets, he curled up at his back without a word and held on until it was over.

Remus poured the soup into a bowl for Sirius. He got him a cup of water. He brought them to the table and set them before him. Then he sat down, crossed his arms over his front and curled his fingers around his elbows, and watched Sirius eat with a steady pace but an all consuming focus. Either he forgot about Remus in the face of the warm food or he allowed him to stare.

Remus thought in the dim light, eating the vision of him in his own all consumed way. His bony shoulders and his tangled hair, and yet somehow he was right there. Sirius. Nothing could reproduce that face, nothing could recreate the shape of his brow or the line of his nose, nothing could imitate this. This face and those hands had ruled Remus’ formative years. In whatever way, slight or suffocating, one way or another, this body had dominated Remus’ life since they were kids.

Even in those years when Remus wasn’t supposed to be tethered by these eyes, which now seemed dim but still undeniably held a familiar someone inside. He remembered how they shined with mirth so often, how they widened in innocent curiosity and widened when he stared at one of his few best friends, in that way that betrayed how earnestly hungry he was for someone to love. He remembered the glimmer that preceded trouble, and the dismissiveness and the occasional eagerness for cruelty.

Even in the time when he wasn’t allowed, even if twelve moons passed without this face in his mind.

_You have haunted my last twelve years,_ he thought.

And he stared while Sirius ate. He demystified him before his own eyes. _This_ is the man whose shadow has lingered a centimeter from the skin of his back for years, following him. And he remembered, looking at him now hunched over a bowl of soup and bedraggled like from a nap, that it was just Sirius. Just Sirius.

In a matter of a minute, the shadow that had dogged Remus’ last decade revealed itself to be just Sirius. And he was thin and Remus felt instantly fated to take him back in.

Neither of them could belong to each other with a second war whispering on the horizon. And he was clearly a different version of the person Remus knew. But nothing could remake this person. Remus was struck by a settling of his spirit. He was here now, bar the rest.

Eventually Sirius stopped putting spoon to mouth but he didn’t have anything to say and he didn’t seem put to moving anywhere. He didn’t even pull away from the bowl. Remus watched for a quiet minute, while Sirius stayed hovered over the food – there was still some left. He didn’t seem able to finish it because he tried another bite and stopped all together, just breathing and sitting. Remus understood from his own worst years that Sirius wasn’t used to getting enough to eat and trying to keep on would make him sick. There was something dog like about the way he guarded it even so.

“You finished?” Remus spoke up. “I can tidy up.”

Sirius looked at the bowl then to the sink and looked back up at him, reluctant to waste it.

“Do you want it?”

Remus shrugged his shoulders and shook his head to indicate he didn’t mind. Sirius pushed the bowl toward him. Remus pulled it the rest of the way and rested his elbows on the table, scooping up some soup and finishing it. Something about Sirius seemed to loosen at this, as if the food had gone to an appropriate place and he no longer had responsibility for it.

Remus finished the food like that, the figures reversed so Sirius now stared and watched silently.

When Remus was done he glanced up so they could meet eyes for a second, then he cleaned up the dishes.

They got ready for bed, Remus moved them into the sitting room and cast another bulwark of a heating charm on the living room. He pulled the bed out of the couch, the old thing creaked and screamed at the ordeal after years folded up, and he poked it with his wand to fluff it up and transfigure it into a more comfortable mattress. He dressed it with sheets and three blankets, and two pillows that smelled like an abandoned linen closet that hadn’t been disturbed since the Lupins were still around.

He did all of this efficiently and even tossed a surreptitious warming charm at the bedding. Remus had always run warmer than Sirius and he didn’t have the weight of any fat on his bones to keep him warm and the house was in fact freezing.

He finished up and told Sirius he’d be right down the hall and the bathroom was next to the laundry room, in case he had forgotten.

Sirius sat on the warm bed and nodded and Remus went away. He fell asleep that night, somewhat unsure of what to make of having him in the other room.

* * *

The next morning Remus didn’t linger in the bedroom as he typically did, but came to the living room to find Padfoot curled on the pull out bed. He was a tight ball of fur covered bones, pressed against the back of the couch and the pillows, leaving the rest of the bed empty. He hadn’t disturbed the blankets and must not have used them. He was awake already.

“Hey,” Remus murmured, voice scratchy with sleep, looking warn out. Padfoot seemed somewhat tense and he did nothing just then but look at him, not even lift his head. Remus had always had a scuffed look about him. As a twenty year old, it had made him look secretive or like a gothic hero. But his twenties had been hard living, that without mentioning the transformations, and a werewolf suffered without proper care. Now, at thirty four years old he looked a little more than scuffed.

Remus sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face and wiped sleep from his eyes. He asked him how he was doing, a fool’s question but habits can be helpful, and Padfoot shifted his head over just slightly. Sucking in a shallow breath he huffed it out in a sigh. Remus nodded.

“Look, I’ll make tea and I’ve got some toast. Then I need to go get us some food and you can use the bathroom, to wash up.”

Padfoot made no reaction so Remus stood and shuffled to the kitchen. He did just as he said he would and Padfoot stayed on the pull out bed while he listened to the sound of the silverware pinging against cups and plates – not real silver of course. Remus didn’t bother with having tea in the kitchen but brought the warm drink to the bed with a small tray. Sirius materialized and sat silently while they drank. Remus didn’t reach for the bread, even though he could use it himself, and Sirius didn’t ask him to as he ate it without savor.

It was the last of the food and Remus set out a towel and clothes for him in the bathroom before he stepped out. He made quick work of shopping and marveled at the strangeness of buying enough for two people, thinking all the while how strange it was that Sirius was here at all.

How many years had passed one way, only to change within a matter of months, or really within a second.

He arrived back on the road leading to his home, stepped forward a few paces, and the house materialized suddenly as he passed the barrier. Inside, he saw Padfoot again, in the same place and the same ball, unmoved. While he got to work putting the food away he heard nails clicking down the hallway, a door shut, and the shower turn on. The water sound didn’t run for very long, and when he reappeared in the kitchen Remus was still packing enough food away to stock the cupboards. He was still wet and wearing a different set of Remus’ clothes. Remus didn’t stare but it didn’t stop him from noticing how much cleaner he seemed, perhaps not softer, but more human now. His hair was tangled and unkempt. Dark circles still hung under his eyes and he stared at Remus while he worked in that silent way that rang completely unnaturally from what Remus remembered.

_You used to love the sound of your own voice. You used to talk just to fill time,_ he thought. _You were a bit loud. You couldn’t bite your tongue hard enough to stop yourself sometimes._

But he said nothing and let him sit there quietly while he worked. Remus wasn’t much of a talker anymore either.

He had to keep renewing the temporary charms that warmed the rooms, and he did, all day long. If he ever forgot, he found he could still recognize the drawn posture Sirius took when he was chilled. This was fortunate, considering he didn’t seem to notice when he was cold and did not make attempts to get warm or ask for a spell. Sirius himself didn’t have a wand anymore and he never saw him do wandless magic, which he used to be quite talented with. Magic was second nature, or first, to Sirius when they were young.

A few days passed uneventfully. Sirius seemed alright to move about in the hibernating way Remus lived. They had breakfast in the mornings, dinners in the evening, and Remus got snacks for them in the between which he didn’t actually want but it in turn gave Sirius more to eat. All the food was good for Remus anyway, it helped with a full moon coming in a few days.

At night while Remus lay awake, he heard those paws pacing the house. He got up a few times and stood in the hall watching Padfoot walk around the rooms. He would pace to the front door and sniff the knob and the seams, pace over to the windows and lift his head to look out. He’d pace around the sitting room and pause for lengthy intervals, just standing with his ears pricked and listening, staring out toward the walls as if he could see through them to the fields. He’d pace into the kitchen and sniff the back door and stand there for some time listening outside.

Remus would watch this darkling ritual for a moment before going back to bed and listening to the off and on sounds before he fell asleep.

Eventually, his transformation was upon them again. He notified Sirius, who hadn’t realized the time, even though Remus had caught a glimpse one night by accident at the tattoo of the accurate phase, still there tucked low on the inside of his bicep. It was there just as it had been, one of the tattoos he could actually recognize, aside from the new runes. It had taken Remus’ breath away for just a moment, though he never skipped a beat or betrayed his notice.

In the middle of the day he fell asleep on the recliner and Padfoot curled up and watched him and the walls until he woke up. He woke two hours later to the sun setting and lifted his head, blinking blearily at the skinny dog on top of the untouched blankets. He lay his head back down and shut his eyes and he felt, for the first time in _years_ a surge of petulance. It was the same old feeling he got sometimes, when the full came around _again,_ like it did _every_ month, it never skipped and his transformation never _ever_ failed. Sometimes there was a blue moon, and it happened _twice._ But he felt like there was a kid somewhere very far back in a quiet part of his mind that wanted to have an absolute strop, throw a tantrum. Because it just couldn’t be like this every single month. But of course it was, and he didn’t even twitch as he lay there with his eyes closed, waking up.

It was only because now Sirius was here and he was so different and so silent and it felt like if Remus took his eyes off him for a whole night, maybe he’d miss something.

He shifted about in the chair and loosened up his joints, rubbed his face, sighed out his aching ribs and his tender lungs – all of his parts knew the moon was coming. When he hauled himself up he gathered up a robe and medicinal potions he’d made himself, using Pomfrey’s old recipes which she had to tweak to be so effective on a werewolf.

“Most of the healing you’ll do yourself,” Pomfrey would always say, and she would even drop some of that brisk tone she used with the other students. “Your body is truly brilliant at healing itself, unlike any thing else, because of your condition. But the potions will pick up any of the slack. And make you feel much better at that.”

That’s what she would say, he remembered, tucking his things under his arm and going to the backdoor so he could hole up in the cellar beside the house. Padfoot slinked off the couch bed as he passed and followed on his heels to the door. Remus looked down at him and opened the door. When he stepped out, Padfoot followed and Remus put out a hand.

“Stay.”

Padfoot didn’t push, just stood inside while the door shut with a hushed click, and Remus went to the cellar alone. The wolf spent hours scratching mindlessly at the door and straining for that scent. Moony had never coveted any other scent in quite the way he did Padfoot’s. The rare times he actually caught human scent while transformed, he still remembered those. But Padfoot was different, one of the only scents that preoccupied him so completely, which didn’t fill him with that violent drive. He knew the dog was here, inexplicably, and he demanded all night long to hunt for him.

He made it back inside by midmorning, limping but otherwise he’d only bitten himself once in his frustration at the cage. It wouldn’t even scar, it would heal over in three days. He opened the back door to find Padfoot lying on the floor in wait, the house gone cold. Remus’ mind was flat with the transformation and he just paused for a breather leaning against the counter while the dog looked at him.

He made for the bedroom and Padfoot followed him with only a brief pause in the doorway. Remus crawled in bed and lay down as the morning sun burned through the freezing fog and made the room glow a pale orange.

Padfoot lingered and Remus blinked sleepily, watching him sniff gently the air. When the dog turned around to leave the room Remus’ scratchy voice stopped him.

“Stay.”

Padfoot turned about without much ado and returned to the bedside. Remus patted his hand on the mattress. He jumped up and curled up in an open space. Remus knew the room was cold and he should cast a charm, but his mind was still buzzing lowly with the absence that came after it rearranged like this. He fell asleep.

When he woke, Padfoot was still there, he was even asleep.

Every night from there on, Sirius followed Remus to bed and stayed there as Padfoot. He didn’t sleep much and he never slept human, and sometimes he couldn’t stop from pacing the house for a few minutes. But the nights passed easier from then.

* * *

Remus, now that the moon was behind him, set to work giving the house permanent functionality. He needed things to work and more importantly, to be warm, because Sirius wasn’t going to do it himself and they couldn’t both sit in waste.

It was two days after the full, at the end of a day of Remus walking about the house with a spell book, wand pointing about and muttering incantations to regulate the temperature and the light fixtures. Sirius was watching him. He typically didn’t show much interest in him or anything, but today the work had drawn his eyes. He was such a silent audience that Remus paused at his sudden speech.

“Don’t you have wolfsbane now?” The corners of his mouth tipped down briefly and his eyes shifted as if trying to recall. Remus’ wand lowered and he adjusted the book in his arm.

“Well, yes. Sort of.” He nodded, watching him think. It was as if through a cloud, as if remembering things was difficult, but Sirius had always been quick. “I don’t have any now.” When Sirius said nothing he spoke again. “How did you know about that?”

Sirius blinked and after a brief pause said, “I remember the kids talking about it. Or someone…” He looked away foggily. Remus nodded and said nothing more.

“Why don’t you have it anymore?” Sirius asked. This was the most he had ever asked since he arrived, so Remus readily replied.

“I’m not actually very good at making it, seems.” Remus said and resumed his work. “And the ingredients are hard to come by. Snape was making it for me.” In fact the potion was very complex, really a potion for masters, and being that the main ingredient was wolfsbane any mistake in the brewing could be deadly.

Remus didn’t glance over to look at his face, checking for signs of recognition there. His sharp features didn’t change though, just his thoughts shifting slowly behind his eyes.

Remus thought this would be the last of it but within a few minutes he spoke again.

“Did it help?”

Remus stared at the air before him where he was working, thinking about how to answer this. He pursed his lips, and filled a few moments, looking over at Sirius. He was looking back at him with the most clarity Remus had seen yet.

He wondered if Sirius remembered how long this potion had been in the working. He wondered if Sirius knew how long ago Remus had read those early reports of the progress and if he knew how loftily unlikely and strange it was to be here now, at a time where the potion actually existed. This is all despite the fact that it’s an inaccessible potion to the poor, most werewolves couldn’t get their hands on it, and the government’s priority was not in distributing the potion but in having access to it in order to administer at their own need. The potion itself was created by an independent group of inventors, who had the means to do it without the help of the ministry.

“It did work.” Remus said carefully. They looked at each other and Remus wondered where the old Sirius would have stood on this. He imagined he’d have opposed it, but what of the obvious benefits? “It just doesn’t taste great. And… you know. It makes me feel a little off.”

It was the worst potion Remus had ever tasted, which is to say a lot considering his experience with drinking potions, thinking about it now made the phantom of it rise in the back of his throat. It was like the potion wanted itself to taste bad enough to punish its drinker, and something about it made Remus irrationally hateful toward the drink, personifying it in his mind. He was good at drinking foul tasting things and his pain tolerance was extreme, but this potion pushed his limits unreasonably. When he got through the actual swallowing of the medicine, there was no denying it was a poison. It made him feel bad.

And the final insult of the little poison was that it was made to smother the wolf. But in the end, Remus was partly smothered by it as well. It had seemingly confirmed his settled with understanding that there was no dark creature sharing his body with him, switching off the rein once a month. It was in fact, just Remus in here. Sometimes his body changed, and he changed, too. Wolfsbane couldn’t separate the two of them.

He’d always known it was this way, somewhere in his mind. But something about drinking the potion felt like a scientific confirmation, he could feel the magic in the liquid spreading through his flesh and identifying _here, here, here, you the wolf, all here._ How this felt depended on how his day was going.

“It’s not that fun to take, but I take it when I have it.” Remus said after a lengthy silence between them. Because his issue with being a werewolf was never the pain of the change, but always the visceral want in him to kill, which always felt so natural when he was changed. If he could stop that, mostly he still wanted to. Sirius hummed. He went back to work and Sirius watched him do it, looking away at times to stare emptily into space.

* * *

About three days of work later and Remus was finishing with the magical renovation. Sirius was starting to become more active in the slightest of ways, though that same flatness still took Remus by surprise when he watched Sirius. All Sirius ever was was an open flame and all of this was perfectly gone now.

Some days Remus got the peculiar idea that he had been given Sirius’ ghost. The last twelve years had had their way with him and given him back, hollowed out and extinguished. Now Remus was left to be patient with him. But if that was so, it was the blind leading the blind, because those same years had their way with him too.

But they had grown up looking after each other and this felt like some sort of return to habit.

Today was not a better day for Remus, though. His body was healed up and he felt normal again, but some days just looked bleaker than others. Maybe it was the weather today; foggy and grey. It made checking in on the few winter plants in the garden that much more uncomfortable. He was cold and sort of wet. The air was damp. His mood was dim.

He wasn’t unfamiliar with this, though, and he picked at the vegetables quietly. Padfoot had followed him outside, the first time since the full moon that he’d actually followed him anywhere. He was still thin but his fur softened his sharper edges as he padded through the rows and sniffed the kale plants and followed mouse tracks. Remus brought up a few onions and carrots and brushed them off, straightening up with a sigh and determining to get back inside and out of this chill. He hated being cold and hated how often he got stuck being cold without any money. Cold or dirty or hungry or in pain with nowhere to sleep or medicine to take.

He stepped up to the stoop and kicked the dirt off his shoes, Padfoot trotting up behind him and following him in. The door closed with a satisfying click and Remus locked the door reflexively, kicking off his shoes and dropping the vegetables on the counter. He shrugged off his coat and turned to find Sirius sitting in the chair at the kitchen table where Remus usually hung it. He dropped it over the back of the adjacent chair instead and started washing off the food in the sink.

“How long did you go without heat?” Sirius asked his back. Remus looked over his shoulder with the faintest furrow to his brow, disappearing in a moment, to see Sirius staring at his coat. He looked up at him then. Still tactless, apparently. To him this sounded like _how long have you been living like shit?_ This coming from a man who, despite the state of him now, had always had enough money to buy the Queen’s crown.

He wanted first to say _I did this for you, I was fine without the heating._ But that sounded like a destitute argument against the version of this person that he used to contest with. And even then, he rarely blurted his first thoughts.

But he turned around to continue washing, rolled the image of Sirius sitting in his kitchen, visibly warm, around in his head, and decided to ignore his temper.

“Um,” He shrugged. “I’ve been here on and off about two, three years.”

The quiet soothed Remus’ nerves for a few long minutes and he patted the vegetables dry.

Eventually, though, Sirius asked him another question. It had been a few days since the last appearance of these questions, days passed without a word from him, so Remus listened when he spoke and in fact it seemed to take some effort to arrange his thoughts. And in the end, he saw this as a sign of life. Sirius was naturally curious, for better or worse, and this was something he could recognize. He wasn’t going to ask Sirius about his own last twelve years, but Sirius, if he still had anything left of who he was, would.

“How did you… how did you get along?” Sirius asked. “Before. What did you do?”

Remus took his time considering responding, enough time that any real people, not two ghosts, would have thought the conversation over.

How he got by was his private business, and all he had left at this point in his life was the ability to live without an audience. It wasn’t dignity, but it was freedom from any eyes watching him survive. And surviving was all it had been, a sometimes dirty and embarrassing thing.

His mind skimmed over lost summers, each of them defined by their stark aloneness. He’d never wanted to be without the others and finding himself adrift in this way had been corrosive. It felt like a long day. Some of those years were truly lost to him. He could only vaguely remember the first two years, and it was anyone’s guess how he’d come out on the other side of them. Then he’d bumped between odd jobs here and there for as long as he could manage, scraping by, and sometimes not making ends meet. He’d developed two different drug habits, one magical and one not, which he did not ever voluntarily quit but ended up without the means to fix the habit. Those forced withdraws had been difficult and he’d gone through them more than once depending on when he got a hold of more. Sex had been here and there with near strangers, and he truly couldn’t remember very much of the first half of the eighties. 

What had broken it had been the death of his last parent. The ministry had sought him out with the arrangements from Lyall’s will, and Remus had ended up in this house. He’d seen Lyall briefly a few times in the last few years, and now that he could look back on this he was thankful their last conversations had been stiff but mutually respectful and empathetic through the absence of Hope.

After that, he’d gotten himself together using this house, and gotten himself into curse breaking.

That he had proven to be quite talented at, and he was able to survive off it alone for years. He was reckless with international borders and crossed and recrossed them in the pursuit of different cases. His employers didn’t always know or care about what he was and he didn’t care about getting caught by the ministry. The laws had fluctuated even, over the years, sometimes permitting him to travel and sometimes forbidding it.

He considered all of this and more and his initial impulse was strongly in favor of never responding. He didn’t have to. All of his past was safe in his memory and as long as he said nothing, he could keep it there. There was nothing to lose in nothing revealed.

But he got this peculiar feeling that he was deliberately outmaneuvering some long lost version of Sirius who would have tirelessly pressed for this information, stepped out of bounds for it, until he got it. He felt as if he was saying _you don’t even remember how to be curious, much less how to persuade me anymore, you’re not here. So I’ll slip this under your notice._

Then he thought, who else wanted this knowledge? No one. He could stay silent and he would never have to tell anyone about any of it. About how sick he’d been. He could die with privacy in this.

Or he could tell Sirius.

So he looked over his shoulder at him, met his eyes which did flicker with some old sense of searching. Maybe there was something to gain. So he tried to talk to him.

* * *

A month passed like this.

Remus’ dreams became oddly vivid. Now, he typically slept through the night with an occasional dream once a month. But these were unusually easy to recall. Some of them were nightmares. They weren’t full of fear, unlike Sirius’, who he had realized was now prone to night terrors. His feeling was that Sirius was using his animagus form to prevent them, though even this sometimes failed and Remus would wake to Padfoot kicking and panting through his nose before jerking awake and pacing the house. Once Sirius had fallen asleep human and Remus found himself calling his name firmly and shaking him awake from a screaming fit.

Remus’ own nightmares were spaces full of horror, a slow horror with images that moved through his mind at a torturous pace which he couldn’t escape. The dark mark hanging over Marlene’s house. The ashes that he, and only he, had been around to spread for James. The image of them fluttering in the wind from Remus’ hand made his stomach roll when he woke, his breathing slow to stop the nausea. He dreamed of his time with the free packs, he’d been so out of place and they weren’t _his_ pack, the wolf knew. He’d see them converging on a victim and his own teeth getting what they always want so sweetly. Then there was the fighting and killing and the green lights. And the most persistent horrifier, the image of Sirius burned behind his eyes, a photograph at the scene of Peter’s supposed murder – he should to have been there to help it along – the moving photograph shared in _The Prophet._ His beautiful face and eyes wild with craze, and he screamed and screamed as they dragged him away.

And he would wake from those dreams slowly, he wouldn’t shout or gasp. It would take him an hour to shake down the wet coating of dread that lined the inside of his stomach, his chest.

Yet just as often, he had started having startling and bright dreams. This morning he’d woken from one and stared at the ceiling, just watching the images from his dream in his mind. Memories of hot days at Hogwarts, the way Peter used to join him for hazy naps in the dorm. And James’ bright eyes and his sweaty Quidditch smells. And an impossible amount of Sirius. He dominated those dreams, preoccupied his sleeping mind with memories of his sweat damp hair in a bun. The way he’d say something just a certain way and it would make them all laugh. He’d throw back his head and then his familiar laugh. The clever race of his mind and how Remus could always count on him to understand what he would explain. And the intoxication of his attention. There was nothing like it, intense and impossible to command. His grey eyes, naked and guileless with wonder or love, harsh with condescension and scorn. And the touching. No one had ever reached for Remus like he had, just to be close. Just to push and push until Remus was a bed for him to lie in, he could _feel_ it, his sweet longing for Remus to give him comfort. Even when they were kids without thought. He was splendid in his dreams and Remus couldn’t control them.

That morning as he’d lay there after waking, once he’d started remembering, he realized that the pain was more bearable than it used to be and the guilt was gone. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. But he didn’t ruminate on the dreams, didn’t know what to make of them, and he went about his day while letting them lie. He made a trip to the post office and bought food to bring home, enjoyed the open air.

Sirius had better days and worse days. Sometimes he would leave the house without notice and wouldn’t return all day. This made Remus feel oddly tense, until he realized that it reminded him of the war and he resolved to simply ask Sirius where he was going.

“I just like to walk sometimes.” Sirius explained simply, blinking at the question. It resolved that problem.

Today wasn’t one of his better days, it seemed. When Remus returned to the house, he set about putting away the new cheese and milk and meats, all with no sight of him. He figured he may have gone out and took a walk about the rooms to find him. He passed down the hallway and saw in the bathroom, the door still open, Sirius sitting on the floor. He paused, his hands in his pockets, looking at him.

His back was pressed to a wall and his knees were drawn up with his arms around them and he was staring, eyes just a tad widened, at the cabinets under the sink. He didn’t even respond to his presence in the hallway. Like some sort of catatonia, though his gaze was vaguely connected, he must be thinking of something.

He seemed stuck. Remus took his hands from his pockets and stepped into the doorway, his palms pressed to his legs. Sirius’ eyes turned on him sharply, his head still fixed. It stopped him where he stood.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Remus said simply and surely. After a moment’s pause Sirius blinked and his eyes drifted over him and softened up.

Remus murmured under his breath, disarmingly, _here_ and he bent down next to him and offered his hand which he took and pulled him up. Remus let their hands linger clasped together for a moment that reminded him of how long it had been since their hands had touched so nakedly and close like this. He mumbled something affirming and Sirius’ posture softened and so did the rest of his expression, and they went together to the kitchen for lunch.

Remus found that food was their timekeeper and their equalizer. It could be used to soothe or steady a day. Remus fed them lunch and Sirius ate and thought. After lunch Remus went to his bedroom to pass the evening reading. Sirius stepped out into the cold and took a turn about the yard on four paws, noting critter scents and changes in the grasses around the house.

When he returned he came to his room and sat on the bed too. He shuffled and made his halting, antsy way eventually underneath the blankets beside Remus who rested on top, the space between them kept carefully. He watched Remus read, breathe quietly, watched out the window where the evening sun was lighting the cold scene. He listened to the house and the quiet between two wars.

“What are you reading?” He eventually asked. Remus looked over, blinking thoughtfully. He hummed and sighed, shifting comfortably.

“It’s called _Fathom.”_ He displayed the front cover for Sirius, the back too.

“What’s it about?” He asked.

“About a woman on a boat at sea. For a long time, many years.” It was a bleak and filthy book that reminded him of Mary Shelley and her gothic woe. Perhaps grimier and saltier.

“She’s alone?” Sirius asked.

“Mm, yeah.” Remus nodded.

“Why’s she sailing?” His lips quirked down.

“Well,” He looked at the book and thumbed the pages. “She’s supposed to be looking for something. It’s a task. But she won’t go anywhere else.”

She’s just lost her only companion, a cast away whom she’d brought aboard and saved, only now they were gone and she was on her own again. She wasn’t much thinking of her journey anymore. She hadn’t even seen land or another ship for months.

Sirius hummed, his passing interest fading and his head turning away to watch the sun set over the next hour. Remus read on and watched as his breathing got slower and his eyes heavier and sleep creeping toward him.

As dusk fell, Remus stood to go about nightly preparations. Sirius had been latently echoing his domestic tasks, when he would brush his teeth Sirius would consider it and then do it or not. In this way, Remus himself found a more steady routine than ever before. He knew he was prone to instability in his patterns. Sometimes, when he was working or busy trying to survive, he’d be more strict about washing and eating and keeping a clean living space. But he’d also fall into long pits of lethargy. With Sirius around he found no space for slacking on routines, regardless of if he was plagued by that old familiar inertia that dragged at him and told him to lie down and lose time.

If he washed up and remembered to eat on a regular basis, there was a running probability that Sirius would copy him. He didn’t have to say anything for it. And he couldn’t have the both of them squatting in this house wasting away.

This evening, however Sirius was sleepy already and he stayed in the bed, his eyes fighting to stay open. He’d probably stayed up most of last night. Remus considered going to bed but something felt incomplete and that same feeling that drove him to prevent a wasting situation seemed to give him a wild hair. He found a brush in a drawer which he rarely used himself. It was his mother’s. He remembered her in here, brushing her hair when he was young.

He brought it to Sirius and sat on the edge of the bed, showing it to him.

“Do you want a brush?” He wasn’t sure Sirius had known he had one. He cleaned and most of the time he shaved, although the beard had made him look more like a novel hero. But his hair stayed unkept and forgotten.

Sirius had woken up enough to frown at it and grumble his decline.

“D’you want me to?” Remus offered. Sirius shrugged and rolled over on his side. It was a dismissal, but Remus could blame it on his sleepiness, and he was feeling bullheaded.

So he drew up beside him at his back and gathered a lock of hair up to brush. He had plenty of time to stop him and he didn’t, he didn’t even seem to tense at all. So he brushed. Starting at the very end and with only a bit, working in an extremely slow and meandering way. He felt like he was pretending, playing the part of his mother and Madam Pomfrey when they would patch him up, and it was their words that sprung oddly from him.

“You look fine.” Remus rasped. “But you’ll feel better with brushed hair.”

Who knew if this was true. At twenty one this would have been so, he didn’t always brush his hair but he’d run his fingers through it often and remove tangles. This was thirty four, though. And a lifetime of losses had passed between. His old habits may never return and he knew it as he brushed gingerly. Remus had certainly lost his own habits. Somedays he felt like he’d morphed overnight into who he was now, far removed from whoever that twenty year old boy had been.

The only response Sirius made was to tip his head up just so, when the brush could pass through a whole swath of inky hair, and huff a shallow sigh.

Afterward, Remus realized just as he was putting the brush away in the bathroom drawer that he could see black hairs, intertwined with just a few light brown strands. _Mother._ He stared at them just a moment before putting the brush down and closing the drawer. He crawled back into bed and listened to Sirius fall asleep, accidentally human.

He stared at the ceiling and his left hand curled into a fist at his side, squeezing and unsqueezing over and over as he remembered the hair sliding through his grasp. His mind was oddly empty. His hand opened and closed, his fingers pressing against his palm.

* * *

Harry’s response to the photographs was enthusiastic. It came with questions. Remus had stood on the path leading to the Lupin house, which was invisible, and considered opening it here and reading it in private. Who knew what Harry would say, and in response to photographs of the four boys and Lily when they were young. But he decided against it and stepped out of the cold, milder today, and raised the letter in a wave to Sirius.

Handing it to him, Sirius’ expression morphed from its common flatness into an intensity that might have incinerated the envelope just by mistake. Remus leaned over his shoulder and read along with him.

It even brought a smile to his face. Perhaps not all the content. But the sight of Harry’s handwriting and his reports of his friends, and the holiday break approaching. They’d have to get him a gift. It made him smile.

Sirius however just read and read and reread. Then he asked Remus his own questions about Harry. One at first which avalanched into a long time spent talking to Sirius about the details of Harry’s boggart and his patronus and his friends and what they were like.

They wrote a response to him. When Remus made a trip to the Hogsmeade owlery he scribbled down a request for a book on a spare parchment to McGonagall. She was prompt in sending this book to him, along with her own note scrawled on the inside which Remus ran his thumb over and smiled at.

He charmed the outside cover of the book to look different, and boring, and spent days reading from it. He researched dementors comprehensively. He wasn’t going to ask Sirius. But he felt he’d given himself enough time to just be around him again, to respect him on his own enough to just live with him, but now he had his own questions. This was how he’d ask and answer them.

He had his own common knowledge of dementors and he might even know them somewhat better, having taught the subject before. But the book helped him understand their long term effects, which brought the text to focus somewhat on Azkaban, being one of the few places where long term exposure actually occurred.

It helped him understand. Twelve years was enough time, and it seemed as if Sirius had not just lost memories laced with joy, but he’d forgotten how to think about happiness. He’d spent so long with them that even without them, happiness came in fits and fell away quickly as well.

He’d known this, of course, he could still remember the lecture on the subject which had become quite necessary with the circumstances. _You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life._

It helped, still, to understand what this meant in the long term. Recovery for people like Sirius was variable. Given a good chance, he could relearn how to be content. Remus figured that undoing this, reworking a decade, would take a long time.

He evaluated their chances, remembering Sirius before. He’d been a bright and resilient boy, he’d sought out fun and happiness, coming from a dreary childhood hadn’t hindered his capacity for joy. He’d also been harsh, in some ways, and prone to mood swings.

So as they went along with daily living, he dropped hints. He introduced memories, and mentions of memories, and hoped they’d help. Sometimes Sirius showed no recognition at all, in fact Remus found that he remembered things quite well so long as they were negative events. He could perfectly recall details of his own family and missions they’d been on with the Order. Still, perhaps Remus would mention the wedding, and it was simply the wedding because it was James and Lily’s, and Sirius’ brow would furrow and he’d sit and think for some time. Then he might clarify something aloud. _This was at Effie and Monty’s, wasn’t it?_ And _yes,_ Remus would say in return.

Even their first almost argument was, altogether, a sign of life to Remus’ eyes. Sirius had even raised his voice. They’d been talking about Harry in the kitchen and it had led unfortunately to the Dursley’s and this had set Sirius into a rather involved rant along the lines of his time stalking Harry. Remus had stared, brows raised, surprised to see him angry. It was the most familiar behavior. And then Sirius had gotten along to snapping out, “and he should have been with you!”

Remus had managed to bite down on a retort that would have caused all harm and no good: _actually, he should have been with you._

There was just something about hearing criticism out of Sirius’ mouth, using his voice, that worked on Remus more than from anyone else. And of course, there was no one else left who even knew his sins to condemn them anymore. Once the initial urge passed, he was left with angry guilt which he sat with silently until Sirius was done. He managed to stand, with a muttered “I’m going out”, and leave without any damage.

He knew, he told himself, he’s just insensitive and he never thinks before he speaks and he’s not mad at you he’s mad at everything, and he blames himself more than anyone. He walked and walked the wet cold moors and his mind ruminated on all the things he didn’t say, all of his defenses. _What should I have done, kidnapped him? And what about Lily’s blood protection. And what would you have liked me to do with him while I became uncontrollably deadly once a month?_

_And I was fucking poor and I had nowhere to go and all of you were gone._

And his heart. It pulled in his chest now, just remembering the pain.

The real problem was that Harry should have been with Lily. With James. This, an unsolvable problem.

He became tired of walking and apparated, much as he hated the feeling, to the bay miles away from his home. He sat on the black rocks that overlooked the churning water and watched the lights of the town glimmer foggily down the shoreline.

The waves hummed and talked enough to ease his shoulders and he sat listening for a long time. The scent of the sea taking over his clothes. The grey peaks and their breaking and foaming reminded him of _Fathom_ and he imagined the woman at sea so far before him as to be invisible, lips dry with salt and her own mind circling with her own feeble struggling.

He began to feel a surreal difficulty with the fact that Sirius was here, back home, in his house. For a moment reality seemed hysterical, translucent and slapstick. It was not an unfamiliar sense, he’d struggled the same way in the time after that Halloween. Just believing that his friends were dead was hard enough, but Sirius? Yes he’d been known to go too far in the past but he wasn’t a killer. And it was _James._ None of it had made sense. He’d spent years exhausted and confused and aggrieved.

Now, in the turn of a little time, he was suddenly and undeniably no longer alone.

He wanted someone to come down right now, a terrible angel with sky covering wings, to tell him: this is what’s happening to you, these are all of the facts, and this is what you should do. Now go.

He lifted his head and watched sea birds fly along the coastline, dipping low to skim the crests in the water, one following another. The wind tugged at his clothes and his hair. The water roared and silenced his breath and beating heart.

He went over the facts of his life, then and now, in his own mind. It was easier to do, he found. In some ways, the world made more sense now that he knew Sirius was innocent. In some ways it just kept hurting, because it was Peter.

He could make sense of this, though. And he could feel his throat squeezing up, choking on all of his grief.

* * *

Remus started working defense jobs, here and there. It was still so cold sometimes he wanted to hide in the house and not come out. But it gave them both space and brought in money. Sirius used walks as Padfoot to ease his restlessness. Sometimes Remus would join him, and they’d walk together down paths worn through fields and through woodland trails. This was so favored by them both that they did it again, just for the silence and the movement. It put them at ease.

Sirius talked more freely. He became physically and mentally more active. Still there was a grim shade that kept up with him, but Remus couldn’t tell if this was neural pathways formed by dementors and Azkaban or just natural heartbreak. Just missing James. But Remus had a grim shade too and he didn’t mind.

“You’re different, you know.” Sirius said one day while they filled out a crossword on the couch. Remus looked at him, thinking of his new lines around his eyes and new scars and the grey hair he’d started getting in his twenties, knowing that this wasn’t what he meant anyway. It seemed like Sirius was talking to himself, in some way. Affirming that he remembered him before, pressing that he’d changed.

Remus’ lips quirked in a little smile and he nodded, agreeing with a bit of amusement.

And they argued, feeding off bad moods, bad decades, subtle little tiffs that mostly came from Sirius regaining some sense of volatility. And Remus growled back and stood, said “let’s go for a bloody walk” and Sirius frowned indignantly, maybe a bit befuddled. Then followed along.

One morning came with Remus looking at him across the kitchen table, thinking with such singular awareness, “I hated myself so long for loving you.” He watched Sirius eat, hunched over a bowl of food, still looking vaguely defensive. And he wanted to tell the version of Sirius living in his head and judging his choices for years that he never believed it, but he couldn’t because he had. That alone made his stomach heavy, and an ache started in his chest while he ate.

He reminded himself that they’d both doubted each other once, and that made it worse so he focused on his breakfast.

He finished _Fathom_ at night, just after the sun had set, when the escaping light in the sky cast everything in a dim blue. In the bed he leaned against the pillows and contorted into strange positions that shifted every minute or so like he always did when he read. The protagonist abandoned her quest, alone in the ocean, she was starving and pockmarked with sores and her soul blistered in her body. She tried for nothing any longer. Who knew how long she’d drift between the waves, the sky an endless ephemeral board of color and light.

It was horrible. He figured Sirius would call it a miserable ending.

He rested the book on his chest and chewed his nail, worried at his lip, and thought about the conversation he’d had an hour ago with Sirius who slept beside him now. About the likelihood of the death eaters coming back, about the tone of the letters between old Order members, and how peacefully they’d both accepted it – at least in their talking. As if their lives were evenly divided between before and after the war, and once the killing and dying had begun it had never really ended.

In the blue hour he watched Sirius sleeping, stared at his flank rising and falling, and noticed he’d been asleep for some time – peacefully. He noticed he’d gained his weight back, that his face was full again and shaped more like it should be, his hair was healthier.

He wondered about Harry, extensively, wondered when he’d see him again. Wondered what forces were hunting him now. Wondered what the future would hold for him.

* * *

Another full moon came and passed. Both of them had fallen asleep dreaming of the Forbidden Forest, remembering the pounding of paws through the dead leaves, the blur of trees racing past them. Both of them remembered the scent of the other, the way they’d tussle and snap, snarling and panting and chasing. In their memories it was hot and the forest was fermented with scents that made the summer night into something endlessly thrilling. They wondered if they’d ever do that again or if it had already happened for the last time.

Remus slept the day through. When he woke it was sunset. He blinked at the wall, noticed the faint orange glow from the opposite window. He let his mind stay empty and listened to the silence. He became aware of the soreness, the familiar ache. It was manageable, he expected it to be gone within two days.

When he turned his head toward the window, he found Sirius laying beside him, shoulders against the pillows. He was staring out the window at the view. His face was lit by the fading light. Remus stared, any rising thoughts evaporated, even the ache of his body forgotten for a moment.

He watched his grey eyes blinking and shifting intermittently over the view. His dark lashes. He watched the hollow of his neck and the place where the soft sweep of his throat thumped with his carotid, watched the sturdy architecture of his clavicle rise slowly with one breath and fall with the next. He looked at his face. The shape of his cheek and nose and mouth. Beautiful, yes, still. Right now it was smooth and placid, calm as a lake, orange and yellow with dusk light and dark with shade.

And so familiar.

If Remus were younger he might have felt vaguely embarrassed by how weak he felt now.

He blinked and looked over at him, saw him awake. They looked at each other quietly for a moment. Sirius rolled over onto his side, shuffled down until his head was rested on the pillow. They lay facing each other under the blankets, and neither bothered to speak. The sun set so quickly, the light in the room slowly, slowly creeped away.

He spent long enough gazing at their hands between them that eventually he reached out across the slim valley made by the soft lap of the blankets. His hand brushed his and they both quietly watched as their hands curled up together, their fingers wrapped around skin and fine bones, cradled together.

It was warm and something similarly warm but so big it was somewhat painful welled up in his body and made his heart beat softly in his throat. He swallowed and his fingers tightened just so.

He didn’t look up but shuffled to be comfortable. The darkness was sweet and he knew he’d fall asleep again in seconds. Maybe nothing could persuade his body to move now, maybe the universe would be merciful enough not to do it anyways. Just for now.

_“The big miracle is your power to raise the dead._

_Love does that. And it raised me, too. How alive do you think I was – before?”_


End file.
